Hybrid Cloud -The Emperor’s new clothes or stylish business wear?

Reg Research ‘Cloud Computing’ has been on the lips of every IT vendor marketing manager for the past two or three years and Reg readers have always been forthright in telling us what is happening in their organisation compared to the hype. While some vendors think ‘Private Cloud’ to be a contradiction in terms, Reg readers disagree, with many having a good grasp of the solution architecture as well as generally accepting the term itself.

But while public and private Cloud have coined much of the column inches in the press, more recently it is clear that some attention is now being paid to hybrid clouds. In this approach organisations make use of services running inside the enterprise on their private cloud systems and combine these with resources hosted outside the business in public cloud farms. As you’d expect, when we asked readers of the Register to tell us how they see things shaping up here, they filled us in.

The results reveal that quite a few early adopters of private cloud took part in the survey, but even amongst these early movers, hybrid cloud, is still an approach that has yet to attract significant deployment. However, it is a model for which Reg readers see potential future usage.

The survey also highlights that before hybrid cloud solutions can move much beyond early usage and planning, there are several areas, both technology and process / service related, that need further development and maturity.

At the top of the list of things needed before widespread deployment can proceed, was a desire for comprehensive tools to monitor services running in hybrid cloud environments. Readers also noted the need for management tools capable of handling all facets of such hybrid services, irrespective of what platform the service is operating on. Service quality measurement and reporting, plus the billing elements all come into play here, not forgetting keeping systems and data integration challenges under control.

Beyond this, the survey went on to highlight that many core operational processes need major adjustments to be capable of working in hybrid environments, especially in areas like ‘service delivery responsibility’.

If you’re interested in reading more, full details can be found in the Freeform Dynamics report entitled ‘The Links between Public and Private Cloud’ which is downloadable from here.